AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 server set an industry benchmark record for hyperscale cloud computing with a demonstration that highlights how OpenStack can quickly and reliably provision on-demand computing services at scale. The test provisioned 168,000 virtual machines on 576 physical hosts. The first 75,000 virtual machines were deployed in six hours and thirty minutes. AMD achieved the record in collaboration with Canonical using the Ubuntu OpenStack (Icehouse) distribution. MaaS (Metal as a Service), part of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu OpenStack, was used to deliver the bare metal servers, storage, and networking.

"This record validates that the SeaMicro SM15000 is well suited for massive OpenStack deployments," says Dhiraj Mallick, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Data Center Server Solutions. "The combination of Ubuntu OpenStack and the SeaMicro SM15000 server provides the industry's leading solution to build cloud infrastructure that is highly responsive and ideal for on-demand services."

In 10 rack units, AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 links 512 compute cores, 160 gigabits of I/O networking, and more than five petabytes of storage with a 1.28 terabyte high-performance supercompute fabric, called Freedom Fabric. The SM15000 server eliminates top-of-rack switches, terminal servers, hundreds of cables, and other unnecessary components for a more efficient and simple operational environment.

AMD's SeaMicro server product family currently supports the next-generation AMD Opteron ("Piledriver" core) processor, Intel Xeon E3-1260L ("Sandy Bridge"), E3-1265Lv2 ("Ivy Bridge"), E3-1265Lv3 ("Haswell"), and Intel Atom N570 processors. The AMD SeaMicro SM15000 also supports Freedom Fabric Storage products, enabling a single system to connect with more than five petabytes of storage capacity in two racks. This approach delivers the benefits of expensive and complex solutions such as network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networking (SAN) with the simplicity and low cost of direct attached storage.